Dave Mustaine - Mustaine - A Life in Metal

“Listen to this,” Lars said. He inserted a cassette into his stereo and played a rough demo of a song called “Hit the Lights,” written by James and one of his buddies from a previous band. The guitar work was by a guy named Lloyd Grant, who had played with Lars and James briefly, before I came along. The song wasn’t bad; the playing was uniformly sloppy, the sound quality even worse, and the singer had little pitch control or charisma. But there was energy. And style. When it ended, Lars smiled.

“What do you think?”

“You need more guitar solos, that’s for sure.”

Lars nodded. He didn’t seem offended. I think he wanted to hear my honest opinion. Lars had been looking for a guitar player who matched his taste in music, and maybe I fit the bill. Crude as it was, the tape reminded me of the NWOBHM stuff I’d been hearing. I understood the way those guys played guitar from a riff point of view. It wasn’t so much about strumming chords or arpeggiating—picking from one side of the guitar to the other—it was more like picking the same string over and over, to the point where it almost became monotonous. In that way, the riff had to carry the weight of the whole song. If that sounds simple, well, it isn’t. It’s incredibly challenging, because the guitarist is reliant on such a small measure of music. The effect, when executed properly, is almost hypnotic.

I came away from that meeting with minimal expectations. Lars was painfully laid-back. Moreover, as I said, he was just so young—it was hard to imagine that he had any kind of grand plan for assembling what would eventually become the biggest heavy metal band in the world. Like a lot of kids with vaguely defined rock ’n’ roll dreams, he was just sort of stumbling along. I’d been there myself.

The afternoon ended with a handshake and a promise to keep in touch, and then I drove back to Huntington Beach, bleary eyed and stoned. I didn’t know if I’d ever hear from Lars again. But he called just a few days later, wanting to know whether I’d be able to meet him and the other guys in Norwalk, where Ron McGovney lived.

“For what? An audition?”

“Yeah, kind of like that,” Lars said.

I said sure, again figuring I had nothing to lose. It was either play this one out to its logical conclusion—see if these guys had any potential at all—or return to Panic, which was clearly a dead end.

McGovney was a question mark to me. I knew nothing about him. Nor did I know much about James, who, as it turned out, was living with Ron. The two of them had been pals since middle school and were now sharing a duplex owned by Ron’s parents. In fact, they owned several units in the neighborhood, and Ron was given free reign to live in one and turn the garage space into a studio. It was hardly a lavish life—the entire neighborhood had a cheap cookie-cutter feel to it—but compared to the way I’d been living (selling dope to put food on the table), Ron appeared to have life by the balls. As did Lars.

Ron did not make a great first impression. I was a bit of a hard-ass, a wanna-be street kid, and I was suspicious (and probably a bit envious) of anyone who seemed to have been handed an easier path in life. At the time Ron was working—or at least dabbling—as a rock ’n’ roll photographer, with a particular interest in heavy metal. He was always pulling out photos of other bands, most prominently Mötley Crüe. For some reason Ron was a huge fan of the Crüe, and I guess he figured it would impress people to show them pictures of Vince Neil spraypainting his hair or putting his clothes on. I didn’t understand it, and I still don’t. Any more than I understood the way Ron was dressed that first day, in his knee-high go-go boots; Austin Powers–style, skintight stretch jeans; studded belt; and carefully pressed Motörhead T-shirt.

Yuppie metal. That was the look.

I remember being fairly quiet that day. It was almost like I was a gunfighter, and I took the matter with an appropriate degree of seriousness. Mind you, I had never been on an audition before. Whenever I’d played in a band, it had been my band. There was no “trying out” for someone else’s band. Fuck that! I was a leader, not a follower. Playing backseat to someone else really didn’t sit well with me and indeed had put me in a bit of a foul mood. Simply by agreeing to drive up to Norwalk and endure the process of being evaluated and interviewed, I’d compromised my own integrity and standards. That’s the way I looked at it, anyway. What can I tell you? I was arrogant. And I was angry. But I had to swallow my pride. I was tired of dealing drugs and playing with a dysfunctional band. Maybe this other thing was worth a shot.

There was a weird vibe almost from the moment I arrived at Ron’s place. In addition to Lars, Ron, and James, there were a few other people hanging out, including Ron’s girlfriend and a guy named Dave Marrs, a friend of Ron’s who would later work briefly as a roadie for Metallica. I’m not sure what they expected from me. I’d been pretty honest with Lars about how I filled the day. I told him I played music and sold pot on the side; in reality, of course, I sold pot and played music on the side. Regardless, he didn’t seem to care. And neither did anyone else.

Lars introduced me to everyone as I unloaded gear from my car and brought it into the garage. While I set up, everyone else went into another room, which I thought was kind of weird. There didn’t seem to be any excitement about what we were doing. And as far as I could tell, I was the only one competing for the job.

I plugged in my amp and calmly went about the business of warming up. Then I warmed up some more. I kept playing, faster and louder, figuring eventually somebody would walk in and start jamming with me; at the very least, I thought they’d come in and listen, ask me a few questions. But they never did. They just left me there to play on my own. Finally, after maybe a half hour or so, I put down my guitar and opened the door into the house. The entire group was sitting there together, drinking and getting high, watching television. I noticed, by the way, that James and Lars were drinking peppermint schnapps, which was almost comical. I didn’t know anyone who drank schnapps—it was an old ladies’ drink.

“Hey—we gonna do this thing or what?” I asked.

Lars kind of smiled at me and waved a hand. “No, man…you got the job.”

Huh?

I looked around the room. Was it really that easy? I didn’t know whether to feel like I’d been offended or complimented. My response vacillated between relief and confusion. Did they not care? Were they so impressed by my warm-up that they just had to have me in the band? (I knew I was pretty good, but I didn’t know I was that good.) The way I see it, looking back on it years later, maybe they didn’t want to conduct a real audition—with all of us playing together—because it would have given me the opportunity to gauge their level of skill and musicianship. That strikes me as a bit ironic now, given the sometimes acrimonious nature of our relationship over the years, and the fact that I have often been portrayed as someone who was lucky to be in the right place at the right time, filling a temporary hole in the Metallica lineup.

But I didn’t know any of this at the time. Both physically and in the way he dressed, Lars was as foreign looking as he had been the day we met, but I attributed that largely to his European upbringing. Ron was doing his thing, and James…well, James was rail thin, with black spandex tights tucked into boots and a cheetah-print shirt. Displayed prominently on his wrist was a wide leather bracelet with a clear patch in the middle of it—almost like the kind of thing a quarterback wears on game day, with the plays written on it. James, you could just tell, was trying really hard to look like a rock star. He had long hair shaped into a windswept coif, so that he resembled Rudy Sarzo, the bass player for Ozzy Osbourne.